Monday Matters: Fort Smith Real Estate Broker Turns Minister

Real estate broker-turned minister John Clayton said when he felt the call to “plant” a church in Fort Smith, he did not expect to find the fertile garden spot the Lord provided for his undertaking.

Clayton, a Fort Smith native and lifelong resident, is pastor of Covenant Presbyterian Church, Fort Smith’s only congregation within the Presbyterian Church of America. The 41-year-old said he felt called to a bivocational ministry in 2011 and was ordained into service at First Baptist Church of Fort Smith, where he worshipped.

A person in a bivocational ministry shares his time between his work for the church and a secular career, an arrangement which allows him the freedom to support himself and his family through outside employment. As he transitioned into full-time ministry, he also made a decision to move to the PCA, a denomination that embraces Reformed doctrinal beliefs, which Layton said, “hold that the purest expressions of scriptural doctrine are found in the Calvinistic creeds, particularly the Westminster Confession of Faith.”

The PCA is one of the fastest growing denominations in the United States, with more than 1,450 churches and missions throughout the U.S. and Canada. “We are very different from Presbyterians,” Clayton said.

When it came time to scout a location for his new congregation, Clayton said he feared he would start where many young congregations begin, a vacant shopping center storefront. But the real estate developer in him — he has 20 years of experience in the business — inspired him to look a little harder for a more suitable spot.

He said a church member told him about a church building near downtown where she had attended a wedding. The building was currently operating as the Brunwick Wedding Chapel. Clayton said he knew the owner through a friend and the two began talking.

The conversation ended with an agreement to purchase the old Cumberland Presbyterian Church, a historic brick structure at the corner of North Ninth and North B streets, two blocks off Garrison Avenue.

Clayton said the building dates to approximately 1899. The Cumberland congregation, which began in a Garrison Avenue location in 1888, eventually became Central Presbyterian Church. Central occupied the building until sometime in the 1960s, when it moved to its current location at 2901 Rogers Ave.

Clayton said he has not closely traced the history since then. He said he knows for a time it housed an architectural business, and at another time, a licensed message therapist rented space in the basement. The last tenant was the Brunwick Wedding Chapel.

Covenant Presbyterian held its first service at the church on Oct. 14. Clayton said the congregation is now about 70 and growing. Members include a cross section of younger families with children. There are also older members, some among them who remember attending the church before it closed.

One of them is Brent Roberson, who said he began attending the church with his mother six decades ago when it was Central Presbyterian.

“I feel I’ve come full circle,” Roberson said. “Now at 66, I am back in the same church building … . I guess it was kind of meant to be.”

Roberson said he heard about the church of his youth reopening from a neighbor, who happens to be Clayton’s father-in-law.

The old building, Roberson said, is essentially unchanged by the years. “The bones are there. And the bones are really getting polished,” he said.

He said his connection with the building goes a step further.

“I knew it had changed,” he said. “I knew there had been an architect there. I knew that because the architect there designed our home.”

Clayton said church members want to bring the structure as closely as possible to its original condition. They are seeking depictions of the structure from its early days to serve as guidance. Old photos, illustrations or other artifacts related to the church are being sought

Some work on the church has already been done. Members removed from two huge heating tubes — Clayton called them “torpedoes” — that jutted from front of the church out over the congregation seats. Their removal restored an unobstructed view of the large stained-glass windows.

Other changes included removing some fluorescent lights in the front of the church that apparently were installed when the building was an architectural office. The church pulpit, which had been moved off to the side of the communion table, was returned to the center of the church and put into its intended spot after the original altar steps were uncovered, revealing a niche that had obviously been cut to house the pulpit.

Clayton’s wife, Sydney, was cleaning a table in the church when she found a strip of wood along its front had come loose. She pulled the strip back and uncovered an inscription, “This Do In Remembrance of Me,” across the front of the table. It was the church’s altar table.

Many other projects, small and major, remain. Clayton said the church interior needs repainting and replastering in spots and restoration of the balcony to its original configuration. He would like to have a kitchen, Sunday School classes and modern restrooms in the basement, where a space has already been converted to a nursery.

Exterior landscaping and replacement of the roof will eventually be accomplished. Clayton said he is working with the Central Business Improvement District to investigate any assistance that may be available in restoration of the obviously historic building that is within the boundaries of the CBID and the West Garrison Avenue Historic District, a location listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The soundness of the 114-year-old structure — its thick walls and solid, unshifted foundation — make it “in many ways better than many modern buildings in town.”

Clayton said the parallel paths — restoration of the building and the planting in it of a congregation with a rich theological tradition — are exciting undertakings. Moreover, he appreciates the “sacredness of place” the church conveys.

“Theologians say architecture says what we believe in God,” Clayton said. “I know we wanted to make this our home.”

He said restoration of the church has also been “an adventure” for his family.

He said the PCA has a strong emphasis on family, and the support of a spouse is a special relationship. “We work as co-pastors,” he said. “I could not do what I do without her.”

Clayton said his three children, ages 11, 15 and 17, are also involved in building the congregation and the church. Their accomplishments, he said, “make me proud as a dad, a husband and a pastor.”